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229 | WILD MARGARET, ©.
er side the man who even then, as she thought, wasplot-..
ting her ruin! — re
. Suddenly she heard his name again. It. was the old
general, who, apparently, could not forget the young En- -
glishman who had taken the big jump.
“ Has any one seen Viscount. Leyton lately?’’? he in-
uired. _ a
4 Margaret had a piece of bread in her hand, and was
breaking it, but the prince saw her hand fall, and her
_. fingers close over the bread with a convulsive clutch. |
- 4 © **T saw him when I was in London a month ago, count,
‘said the young attache. Be ce!
' “Indeed. And is he as strong and cheerful as ever?
- Dear me, I remember him singing a song—a stupid sort of .
song; but he sang it with that light-hearted chic which the
rench so pride themselves on, but which, after all, one
sees oftenest in the English.”
Blair Leyton wasn’t very light-hearted when I saw
him last,” said the young man, ‘He wasawtully changed.
| He'd been ill, so they said, and very unlucky, too, Some-
thing had gone wrong with him, I fancy; an ‘affection of |
' the heart,’ I suppose. Your Englishman, when he loses
his -mistress, invariably takes to drink or gambling. — I.
don’t fancy Blair would sink to the former, so I imagine
he had been going in for the latter. You know the Green
Table Club, general?” . /
~The count made a significant grimace, and executed
something very like a wink, and the. attache nodded sig-
nificantly.
‘* Poor fellow, he was always reckless and careless, but
_lately they say he was positively desperate. He must have
~ been living pretty hard, for he is so fearfully altered; the -
_ mere shadow of his old self; and you know what a splen-
_. did fellow he was, general?”
. _ **Ah, yes,’ assented the old soldier. ‘‘Ithought when ~
- I saw him that.I would give a good deal to have him 1n ~
—/my brigade. ~-And he was so altered and broken, you
9
”
_ “Oh, terribly. Iheard, too, that he had lost nearly all _
his property. He had a great deal in his own right, in ad-
dition to his heirdom of the Ferrers property.” .
‘It isa dreadful thing to see a man so richly endowed
go to the dogs in that fashion,” said: the general, who
had porne anything but a character for steadiness in his
youth, : So
A smile went round the table, and the attache, to close
the subject, remarked: | . -
_** Oh, I hope the dogs wili be disappointed yet. There
was a rumor ofa match between Blair and the great heiress,